Natalee Holloway was last seen driving off in a grey Honda with a group of young men while holidaying in Aruba. Her murderer, Joran van der Sloot, claimed he returned the teen to her Hotel, but surveillance and investigations revealed that something much darker happened that night.
Natalee Holloway’s story gained notoriety in the early 2000s due to around-the-clock media coverage and the case’s mysterious nature.
In the later days of May 2005, Natalee Holloway and a group of other seniors from Alabama’s Mountain Brook High School took a flight to Aruba to celebrate their graduation.
The extravagant trip was a tradition at the high school Holloway attended, located in a wealthy suburb of Birmingham, Alabama.
The class’s goal was also to celebrate their graduation on sun-drenched beaches and experience the local nightlife. On May 26, 124 students and 7 chaperones checked into the Holiday Inn Sunspree Resort.
For the first few days, it was exactly what one would expect in such a scenario. Days spent on the beach, parties, and teenagers having as much fun as they can away from parents and other watchful eyes.
On the 29th, Natalee and her friends headed over to Carlos’ n’ Charlie’s, a hot nightclub in the heart of the capital, Oranjestad. It was loud, fun, and the finale that the teens wanted to cap their holiday. This would be the night Natalee disappeared, never to be seen again.
Timeline of her Disappearance
The above photograph was taken at Carlos n’ and Charlie’s nightclub prior to Natalee’s disappearance. She is depicted in blue to the left of the image. The main suspects are out of frame.
May 29, 2005
On the night Natalee and her friends went to Carlos n’ Charlie’s nightclub, the above photograph was taken at Carlos n’ Charlie’s nightclub prior to Natalee’s disappearance. She is depicted in blue to the left of the image. The main suspects are out of frame. Charlie’s, she met three young men. One central figure in the case was Joran van der Sloot. He chatted up Holloway and her friends. They dance together for some time. When the bar closed at 1 am, Holloway was seen leaving in a vehicle with Van der Sloot and his two friends.
May 30, 2005
The next morning, Holloway’s friends are unable to locate her in her Hotel. A chaperone gives the news to her mother, Beth Twitty.
Beth and her husband, George Twitty, along with some family friends, immediately fly to Aruba on the same day. Their questions led them to Carlos and Charlie’s nightclub. Eventually, they track down Van der Sloot at his home in Noord.
Van der Sloot admits he left the bar with Holloway and the other two men, the Kalpoe brothers. They allegedly drove her back to the Holiday Inn hotel.
He led her parents to the Hotel and promised to point out the security guard who helped Holloway back inside, but they did not find him.
June 1 2005
The Kalpoe brothers and Van der Sloot claimed they dropped Natalee off at 2 am at the Holiday Inn and watched as she went to the reception desk. At first, their story seemed to line up well, but soon cracks began to show.
For one, security footage from the Hotel did not show Natalee ever coming back to the Hotel. The front desk did not see her, and her key card was not swiped. Even the guards had not seen her come back.
On June 5th, the authorities took Van der Sloot, his father, Joran, and the Kalpoe brothers into custody. This was due to mounting pressure from the Twittys and government officials.
Natalee’s mother had begun a media storm that brought significant attention to the disappearance, which placed the investigation under a spotlight.
Beth’s efforts went beyond the expected. She hired private investigators, offered reward money for information, and applied consistent pressure on Aruban authorities to focus on the three boys.
When they were detained a second time, the brothers changed their story. They now stated they had dropped Van der Sloot and Holloway off at a beach that was near the Holiday Inn. Van der Sloot said he had left her there so she could walk home.
As the investigation progressed, a judge ordered the release of the Kalpoe brothers. Since it appeared that Van der Sloot was at the centre of the story, he was held for another 60 days.
During this time, a handful of Arubans and 100 tourists began searching the four-and-a-half kilometres of coastline up to the island lighthouse. The search expanded in the weeks to come to include Dutch marines, the Aruban police, three F-16 planes from the Netherlands, and a volunteer team from Texas.
By this time, the media coverage had gained national attention in America, leading to more pressure on local authorities to find the girl.
At one point, the Aruban government gave 4,000 employees a day off so they could join the search. Despite the efforts, no physical evidence was recovered.
Media Attention Creates Chaos
Due to widespread coverage, authorities were unable to keep up with inquiries and tips. This made it hard to separate fact from fiction. In July 2005, a homeless man claimed he had seen what appeared to be a woman’s body in a landfill. However, when police searched the area, they found nothing.
Similarly, a barrel was seen out at sea not long afterwards. When it was dragged onto the beach, again, there was nothing inside.
On July 17, a hair strand was found stuck to a piece of duct tape on the northeast coast of the island. This immediately drew attention and created hopes for a lead. It was sent to the FBI crime lab in Quantico for analysis. Unfortunately, it was not a match for Holloway.
A week later, investigators acted on a tip from a gardener who said he had seen Van der Sloot and the Kalpoes digging near the Marriott Hotel.
The authorities then drained the pond across from the Marriott. This effort was abandoned four days later, as it did not bear fruit.
The Kalpoe’s were brought into custody but soon released along with Van der Sloot on condition they remain available to law enforcement. This greatly enraged the Twittys, who lashed out against the Aruban government and law enforcement.
In September of 2005, Van Der Sloot went on ‘A Current Affair’ and reiterated that neither he nor the Kalpoe brothers had sex with Natalee Holloway. He confirmed that the three agreed to tell authorities they had dropped her off at her Hotel.
In February the following year, Van der Sloot’s parents claimed that their son was unfairly singled out and the investigation had devastated their family.
New evidence Re-Arrests and Confessions
Van Der Sloot was arrested in the Netherlands, while the Kalpoe brothers were taken into custody in Aruba after new incriminating evidence was presented.
This was from secret recordings of conversations made with listening devices placed in the suspects’ homes. In one conversation, Deepak Kalpoe told Joran he was looking at 15 years in prison if they found the girl.
Because the evidence failed to move the case forward, all three suspects were released. In late December, an American search vessel found evidence of what appeared to be a human skull in Aruban waters. Though this proved a dead end, divers found nothing in the trap.
The most significant piece of evidence yet, though, was revealed by Dutch Crime Reporter Peter De Vries. He hired Patrick van der Eem to go undercover and chat up Joran while having a hidden camera.
Van der Sloot was smoking marijuana and admitted that he was having sex with Natalee on the beach when she had a seizure. Apparently, he tried to revive her, but to no avail.
At that point, he allegedly had a friend take her out to the ocean on their boat and dispose of the body. Van der Sloot later said he was making it up.
Case Intrigues and Extortion
In late March 2010, Joran van der Sloot contacted John Kelly, Beth’s lawyer, proposing to reveal the exact location of Natalee’s remains in exchange for $25,000 in advance. He would also be willing to reveal the circumstances of her death for a total of $250,000.
Kelly was dispatched to Aruba to meet with him in person. The lawyer described Van der Sloot as looking desperate for money, and he gave him $100. Kelly then notified the FBI.
The FBI, in collaboration with the Aruban government, implemented a coordinated sting operation. Joran received the $25,000.
In exchange, he told Kelly that his father, Paulus, had buried Holloway’s remains in the foundation of a house. This was found to be false because authorities confirmed that the house question had not yet been built when Natalee disappeared, but was built much later.
Van der Sloot later emailed Kelly, confirming that he had lied about it. The FBI, though, did not issue any charges against him, even after he took the money, which shocked Beth Twitty.
They said the case had not developed to the point of taking him into custody. Joran fled with the money to Bogota and then Lima.
The Murder of Stephany Flores
In May 2010, Joran met Stephany Flores, the daughter of a well-known Peruvian businessman, at a casino in Lima. She was a student at the time. The two of them were seen entering Van der Sloot’s room at Hotel TAC at 5 am on May 30.
Surveillance video later captured Van der Sloot leaving the room with his bags. Flores was found dead in the hotel room, beaten and with a broken neck. Police reviewed the tape and concluded Van Der Sloot was the prime suspect.
They tracked him down as he had fled in Flores’ car and had him arrested in Chile. Joran admitted to the Peruvian police that he had killed Flores following an argument.
She had used his computer without permission and may have seen something she was not meant to.
On the day of his arrest, U.S authorities also issued a warrant for his arrest in connection with a plot to extort $250,000 from the Holloway family in exchange for revealing the location of the victim’s remains.
Justice and Resolution
In January 2012, Van der Sloot was in jail since being taken in, after being convicted of killing Stephany Flores. A panel of judges sentenced him to 28 years in prison and ordered him to pay a $75,000 reparation to the Flores family.
It was not until 2023, though, that Van Der Sloot was extradited to the United States. He was arraigned on counts of wire fraud and extortion against Beth Holloway. On this account, the judge sentenced him to 20 years, to be served concurrently with the years he is already serving in a Peruvian prison.
In October 2023, as part of a plea deal, he admitted to beating Natalee to death on an Aruba beach before disposing of her body in the ocean.
There are other theories as well, about what happened to Natalee. One of which is that she may have been the victim of human trafficking.
In one of his interviews with Fox’s On the Record with Greta Van Susteren, Joran claims he handed Natalee over to a stranger on a boat. This person was allegedly a human trafficker who took Natalee to Venezuela. Van der Sloot also said that his father bribed the police to keep quiet about this information.
Whatever the case, the rate at which Van der Sloot changed his stories was alarming. He enjoyed throwing authorities off the scent. It is likely, though, that his final admission was accurate, considering the other proven cases of violence against women.
In 2012, at the behest of Holloway’s father and against the wishes of Beth, Holloway was formally declared dead by a judge in Alabama.
Van der Sloot is scheduled to be released from prison in 2045. However, considering the statute of limitations on murder in Aruba already expired, he would not be charged for killing Natalee Holloway.
